Is the Gummint going to be influenced at all by these demonstrations? Or, are will they simply be dismissed as an "insignificant, harmless, one day blowing-off-of-steam?"
frigging idiots for the most part. i saw one demonstration where a bunch old old farts were holding up signs complaining about government spending. they all looked old enough to be on medicare which is the biggest budget buster. my mother in law only paid in a few thousand to medicare in her lifetime. in her last year of life she spent hundreds of thousands of medicare money.
Well yeah this is why these morons with the signs are a joke. We want the rich to pay our taxes, want subsidized student loans, welfare, medicare, medicaid, social security, "wipe dem terrorists off the face of the earth"....but we don't want the government to <gasp> raise taxes to help pay for all this stuff!
Barney frank loves these teabagging parties. <img src="http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/attachment.php?s=&postid=2389202"> </src>
I'm guessing not at first. The current administration and congress will try to dismiss the protesters as long as they think they can get away with it. And right now, so far they can get away with ignoring it. Personally I think it will take much bigger crowds and have to become a nearly continuous protest. One day a year isn't go to do much I'm afraid. (I support the movement) IOW the protest will have to become so big, widespread and in the news every day, that the politicians simply couldn't ignore it. They need to be afraid. Afraid of losing their jobs, power and pensions, or better yet - their lives. Footage shown on the evening news of Pelosi, Dodd and Frank hanging by the neck from the flag pole on the white house lawn would certainly get their attention.
The anti-war protests drew 10 times the amount of people and were generally scoffed at by the MSM. I doubt most of these clowns, most of whom thought it was a gun rally, actually pay taxes. Most if not all small businessmen, how shall we say it, are very creative on their taxes. I doubt any of the people I saw interviewed have the mental horsepower to generate any kind of capital gain to be taxed. Most Americans have very little understanding of the tax code in the first place.
The rallies are a populist movement. The Gubmint as represented by the Bush Administration was as elitist as one could imagine, until Barry's Administration took power that is. Newt Gingrich, the Republicans, and the Contract with America got way too much credit for the 1994 election which kicked the likes of Speaker Foley, Jack Brooks, and Danny Rostenkowski out on the street. It was NOT a Republican victory as much as POPULIST ANGER kicking INCUMBENT ELITIST ASS out of office. As clueless as those Republican boys and girls are, the Republicans are going to benefit big time in the 2010 off year election. The tea parties will affect no change in this elitist Gubmint. The tea parties only serve notice that there will be anger at the polls in 2010, and ANY incumbent will be its object.